Accept Yourself or Try to Change?

Interview Yourself

Small Wins

In Search of Christmas

Secular Sermonette: Beware Pop Psych. They know that easy sells.

Pull-Quotes from my book, How to Life, plus my most recent 15 tweets.

A Realist Talks Personal Growth/Education

Do You Need a Coach, Really?

My new book was published today: Baby Steps: Doable ideas to improve your life

My new book was just published today: Baby Steps: Doable Ideas for Improving Your Life. It's available at THIS Amazon.com page.

"My Pathetic Little Life:" A case study and questions that may help

Many people fear that their life will never be what they had hoped when they were younger. My Psychology Today article today presents a composite case study, and then I ask questions that may help.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

Sometimes it’s healthy to delude ourselves. Facing all our fears head-on could yield more unhappiness than benefit. And sometimes, a little excess optimism fuels us to bigger accomplishment than clear-eyed rationality would allow.

But certainly, it can help to be aware of whether you want to curb, indulge, or even increase your “irrational exuberance."¹

To that end,  my Psychology Today article today offers a necessarily incomplete list of possible lies we tell ourselves.

Try-and-Revise

Try-and-revise means replacing excess rumination with a low-risk trial, monitoring the results, and, as necessary, revising or scrapping in favor of a more promising approach. I offer examples in my Psychology Today article today.

Reading Efficiently: Making the most of this COVID-lockdown-acceptable activity

Recently, I wrote about making the most of a COVID-acceptable activity: walking. Today I turn to another: reading.

Whether for pleasure, work, health, or figuring out how to fix your running toilet, amid the COVID lockdown, you may be reading more than ever. My Psychology Today article today offers thoughts on making the most of your reading.

How to Do Life: The Musts

Having written 1,618 posts on my How to Do Life blog, perhaps it’s time for a bit of synthesis. My PsychologyToday.com article today offers what I consider to be the musts.

Whom to Idolize: Better than athletes, performers, lying politicians, and even scientists

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I argue that it's wise to idolize your best self and aspire to being that person. I ask questions to help you tease out how to that.

A Shortcut to Personal Growth: A quick and empowering approach to self-improvement

This is the time of year when New Year’s resolutions have faded and we’re back to business as usual.

The approach I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today may be more helpful because it embeds these principles:

• It’s quick. The longer I’ve been a career and personal advisor, the more I've found that the people who seek such counsel are more likely to follow through on something quick and simple.
• It’s structured.
• Ideas that you yourself generate incorporate many factors that your brain, consciously or not, determines are worth trying.
• Your generating you own ideas is potentially empowering. If your ideas succeed even moderately, you legitimately boost your sense of self-efficacy.

Homework for Personal Growth: An approach for self-improvement and for helping professionals

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers an approach to homework for personal growth. Much of this should be of value not just to therapists, counselors, and coaches, but to any of us in self-improvement efforts.

The BENEFITS of Being Closed-Minded

I was a subscriber to Berkeley Repertory Theatre and happened to run into its director. Michael Leibert. I asked if he wouldn’t mind a bit of feedback. He said, “Yes, I would mind.”

I was shocked. I thought, "He doesn’t have to accept it but he could at least listen to see if it was worthy. After all, open-mindedness avoids our becoming stale, it facilitates our growing, and even makes us better liked because we’ve reacted well to people’s ideas.

But I’ve come to realize that closedmindedness has benefits. I describe them in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Alone During the Holidays: It can be a great time to journal, write a mock letter, or a short-short story

By choice or not, many people are alone for much of the holiday season. One way to spend part of the time is writing. That may be a particularly good time because Christmas, year-end, and the upcoming New Year inspire reflective thoughts.

Perhaps one of the approaches to writing for self-improvement that I describe in my PsychologyToday.com article today might appeal to you.

Reviewing Your 2019: Toward a good 2020

There’s a simple reason why many people have a hard time identifying the year’s lessons learned: They don’t remember even all the important things that happened.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers ways to help you remember the events, identify lessons learned and, in turn, a goal or three for 2020.